Middlebury College

Do you consume reports?

Since moving in to the Davis Family Library six years ago, we who keep track of print periodicals have received some good news and some bad news. The good news: print periodicals get used a lot more in this Library than they did in our previous building. The bad news: print periodicals get used a lot more in this Library than they did in our previous building.
In particular, it has come to my attention a number of times in recent weeks that print issues of Consumer Reports seem to vanish from the shelf, more or less forever. We try to keep the current year’s issues on the shelf. However, a week or so ago, there were two “current” issues, one from February 2010 and the most recent one, dated August 2010. As I write this, there are none – neither on the shelf nor in the ‘usual’ reshelving areas.

I’m posting this to specifically ask anyone who sees or knows of Library copies of Consumer Reports to please see that they get returned to the Current Periodicals area on the Lower Level of the Davis Family Library.

I will also take this opportunity to point out that, for many of our titles, the issues we have in Current Periodicals are the very same issues that we send to be bound and then house in Bound Periodicals. (I am surprised how many people think we buy bound volumes separately.) We have some gaps in our bound holdings because the print issues we received, apparently, grew legs and vanished.

Anyone who comes in to the Davis Family Library is more than welcome to take an issue of any of our print titles and sit down anywhere in the building they find comfortable to peruse or study that issue. If you do, though, when you are finished, please leave it in plain sight so we can gather them and put them back on the shelf.

On behalf of everyone who still likes to read things on paper sometimes – thank you!

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2 thoughts on “Do you consume reports?”

I think Consumer Reports is a particularly vulnerable target — it contains information that affects decisions mostly at home and in the store. I don’t see too many people wanting to steal the ideas-heavy periodicals like the Atlantic. That’s cause when you’re done reading it, you take the ideas with you. Consumer Reports is clearly tempting for its rankings and statistics that are so specific you need it writing.

Who owns the digital access to Consumer Reports (I believe it’s free online if you subscribe in paper)? Maybe it should transition to being a digital tool for the Midd community?

You are absolutely correct about the uniqueness and value of the information in print issues of Consumer Reports. (I will point out that if a patron tries to take an issue of CR out of the front door of the library – perhaps to a store for a shopping trip – the alarm will [or at least should] go off and the folks at the Circ desk will stop them.)

If we could, we would happily provide access for our users to their online content. Indeed, we would have likely done so a number of years ago. However, Consumer Reports does not offer institutional online subscriptions. (Why that might be would be a post in itself.)

This makes it doubly important that we try to keep our print issues available for all.

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PS – I went to the CR site to check, and online access is not quite free with a subscription to the magazine: an individual subscription to Consumer Reports magazine is $29; access to consumerreports.org is an additional $19 for magazine subscribers. Online access by itself (without the magazine) is $26 for an individual.